Factor 5's cancelled Sony exclusive detailed

By Fred Dutton Published 7 November, 2011

Rogue Squadron/Lair dev was working on Animal Wars.

Rogue Squadron and Lair developer Factor 5 was working on a Sony exclusive multiplayer combat title called Animal Wars, according to a former staffer.

A piece of concept art from the mystery game, which sports a Sony copyright symbol, appeared on NeoGAF over the weekend.

Another poster, who used to work at the studio, then offered up a little information on the cancelled title.

Apparently the image is "from a game called 'animal wars' that was a ww2 themed game that played like warhawk but war between animals. It was f****** amazing looking and was way better than Lair so it made all of us sad it got cancelled."

An additional leaked image in the same NeoGAF thread appeared to show concept art for a new Turrican game.

Factor 5's US arm closed down in 2009. While its German HQ is still open it hasn't released a title - or unannounced development on a new project - since PlayStation 3 flop Lair limped onto shelves in 2007.

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About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (18) Latest comment 7 months ago

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  • FuzzyDuck #1 7 months ago

    'way better than Lair'?

    So 4/10 then.

  • MattEdWithCheese #2 7 months ago

    I like to think of myself as a bit of a beaver pioneer...

    Don't really know what else to say with so little info to go on, at least I think the alleged Kid Icarus game would have been a travesty...

  • Yeoung #3 7 months ago

    How do these guys brainstorm, their concepts are ridiculous.

    "So okay gentlemen, WW2 shooters are in, how can we profit from that"
    "We make a WW2 shooter, sir"
    "I like the way you think, Johnson, but how do we seperate ourselves from the pack"
    "Instead of humans, we use woodland critters, sir. Wouldn't that be a hoot"
    "Goddamnit you're a genius Johnson"

    *greenlight*

  • RodHull #4 7 months ago

    Cute animals fighting a WW2 theme? How very original They could fight against some angry facist teddy bears. Called the Tediz! Who you had to Conker! Yay!

  • peterfll #5 7 months ago

    Tis a shame, their Nintendo Star Wars games were great. Well, not so much the last Rouge Squadron....

    I can still remember seeing the Rouge Squadron II Rouge Leader footage from E3 that year and thinking 'wow!'. And then getting the game with my launch GameCube..... happy days.....

    Edit:

    @peterfll ROGUE. It's ROGUE.

    AAAAAAAAAAAH

    Oops.
    Edited by peterfll at 07/11/11 @ 22:00

  • cloudskipa #6 7 months ago

    Factor 5 are great devs, some of their gfx engines are stunning. Rouge Squadron on GC still impresses to this day. Microsoft should pick this up instead, it sounds like a great idea (reminiscent of Fur Fighters) but I'd certainly be more interested in a new Turrican game! I love Turrican and it deserves to be updated. NOW

  • Code_R #7 7 months ago

    Factor 5... what happened? This gen's Rogue Squadron would have been amazing...

  • Koozer #8 7 months ago

    @peterfll ROGUE. It's ROGUE.

    AAAAAAAAAAAH

  • Yeoung #9 7 months ago

    @Koozer To be fair, rouge squadron makes for a fun concept.

    Using the force to adjust your nipple tassles? Count me in.

  • malloc #10 7 months ago

    Shame Nintendo didn't step in to help them out. F5 really provided some 'console-buying' content for their platforms.

  • Goodfella #11 7 months ago

    @Koozer

    Haha, the amount of times I've seen rogue spelled rouge is astounding.

  • Redeye #12 7 months ago

    Rogue Squadron reboot for 360/PS3/PC, if you please LucasArts, and get Factor 5 on it like yesterday.

  • funkateer #13 7 months ago

    I remember picking up Lair in the discount bin a long time ago, and thinking it wasn't really that bad and actually quite nice looking. But the controls were patched at the time.

  • peterfll #14 7 months ago

    @Koozer Haha. Oops!

  • TonyHarrison #15 7 months ago

    Rogue Squadron II was a GC launch game and it was one of the best looking games of its generation (despite games tending to improve as the gen goes by). It makes me wonder what they could get out of the tech available today with a similar game.

    I can't help but wonder what might have happened had they not put a huge amount of eggs into the PS3 basket when it was being outsold by the GBA though...

  • Geminosity #16 7 months ago

    Ever notice how all the games that never make it to release were "amazing" or "awesome"? when you ask the devs who worked on it? :p

  • 3william56 #17 7 months ago

    Google "Catshit One" (yes really, not a joke) to see where this could have been leading. Which I can't decide whether would be awesome or horribly disturbing.

    Maybe PETA gave them a call...

  • Der_tolle_Emil #18 7 months ago

    Their Rogue Squadron games were fantastic but to be honest besides those and Turrican F5 didn't really do all that much. Somehow most of their non-Turrican or non-Star Wars titles were cancelled. If the reviews of Lair are anything to go by it's probably for the better.

    Technically the games were really impressive though, definitely the studio which got most out of the hardware years before other devs did. They also get a big +1 in my book for having Chris Hülsbeck do some of the music and Julian Eggebrecht for occassionaly writing for the German TOTAL! magazine when it still existed (best console magazine ever).

    Hopefully they will get back on the track, I think they announced that they are working with Nintendo and LucasArts on a Wii game about two years ago but I am not sure if this also was already cancelled or not.